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Soviet Women Building Up Socialism

This poster depicts a Russian woman holding the Soviet flag, with the caption: “Emancipated women – build up socialism”. The artist A. Strakhov-Bratislavskij created this poster in 1926 for the government of the Soviet Union (Global Fund for Women). After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, men and women were proclaimed equal by the Soviet government. Women were greatly desired by the Soviet government, and not only for raising children. The Soviets saw women as an economic asset that they believed would make a great contribution to the nation. As a result, the numbers of women in the workforce doubled from 423,200 in 1923 to 885,000 in 1930 (Goldman).

Artistically, this poster displays a muscular young woman in working clothes. She is holding the Soviet flag with a determined expression (Global Fund for Women). The background displays factories belching smoke, hinting at the Soviet Union’s economic growth and rapid industrialization. The poster is in black and white, with a red Soviet flag and red text. The slogan “Emancipated women – build up socialism!” means that since the Soviet Union has opened up more jobs and opportunities to Soviet Union, they should take advantage of this and help to build up the Soviet Union and its ideological tenets. This poster is directed at Soviet women to join the workforce and become members and supporters of the Communist party (Buckley).

Posters encouraging women to work and build up socialism were common from the advent of the Bolshevik Revolution through the 1980s. The Soviet government had an interest in women since before the Revolution. Among others, Vladimir Lenin saw women as an asset to the Soviet labor force, which had mostly been ignored by previous Communists. He noted that “petty housework crushes, strangles, stultifies, and degrades [the woman], chains her to the kitchen and the nursery, and wastes her labor on barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-wracking, stultifying and crushing drudgery” (Engel). In time, the Soviet government introduced the First Family Code, which enabled equal pay and benefits for men and women, gave maternity leave, and provided health benefits, among other laws. Labor laws allowed women to receive insurance, an equal set minimum wage and vacation time (Engel).

Did the poster campaigns successfully mobilize women? It is hard to say if the posters had a specific impact on women, but the fact is that millions of women entered the workforce. They contributed to industry, agriculture, the military, teaching and the arts and sciences (Engel). Women were an asset to the Soviet government, and at the time, they received many benefits that women in other countries could only dream of. The posters were merely a factor in encouraging women to join the labor force.